


Smoother Pebbles

by Nny



Series: Sandcastles [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (it's been a while), (not like that), First Time, Long time coming, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 14:18:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Making an effort, angel?" he asked.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoother Pebbles

Crowley had never known if it was embarrassment or selective memory-loss, or whether the entire incident had been carefully sponged out of history; he had never known precisely how much power Adam had. But the iron-filings feeling that had intensified thereafter had tied him directly into their networks, into Adam's, into Below's, and since then it had been like a radio mistuned in the back of his head. It was a constant anti-noise, an undeniable awareness that there was something else there and watching, and the sudden and huge and gaping lack of it sent him groping for the arm of the sofa, trying desperately to hold himself upright. 

"Crowley?" Aziraphale asked, obviously worried. 

Crowley supposed he looked a sight, pale and wobbly and probably shaking, and he flipped his sunglasses onto the top of his head and rubbed at his eyes with unsteady hands. 

"He's gone," he said, and the very absurdity, the _impossibility_ of it caught in his throat and sent back a snort that almost choked him, coughing sputters that turned into helpless laughter. 

"Who's gone?" Aziraphale asked, deliberately brusque, doing something with the sideboard that sent a drawer slamming closed with a decisive bang. 

"Adam," Crowley said, the pitch of his voice all over the place, "and Below, too. He's given the powers back." A couple more unsteady, laughing breaths. "Seems like for now I'm off the hook." 

There was a gentle pattering and Crowley looked over, confused, only to watch the quiet but decisive thump as the last of the crumbs and the remains of a prehistoric jam sandwich hit the floor. Aziraphale gave the paper bag in his hands a few quick shakes and then balled it up and came over to hold it to Crowley's face. 

"Here," he said. "You'll feel better." 

"What are you - " Crowley slapped futilely at Aziraphale's hands, at the crumpled paper that was shoved uncomfortably up against his nose. It smelled oddly of ages and dust, fossils and petrified wood, because of course nothing of the angel's would do anything so undignified as rot. "Stop it!"

"You'll feel better," Aziraphale insisted. "My dear, I fear you're hysterical." 

"You have to stop treating me like I'm human!" Crowley said, feeling like he was coming apart a little at the seams. 

"I will when you stop _acting_ like it," Aziraphale snapped, and it was weirdly and inexplicably the best thing he could have possibly said, and the giddy reality that all of a sudden the possibility of consequences didn't roost so close tugged him forward. He pushed Aziraphale's ancient lunch-bag out of the way, curled a hand around the back of the angel's neck, and pulled their mouths together. 

It was a moment of perfection. It was a moment that Crowley had locked into his strongest mental safe as soon as it was imagined, barred and bolted and never admitted to for eight years, for far, far longer than that. It was ended abruptly with the taste of wet brown paper, and Crowley shoved at Aziraphale's hands. 

"I am not hysterical!" he said. 

Aziraphale stepped back and watched him warily. Crowley lowered his hands - the expansive gestures probably weren't the most convincing - and shoved them into his pockets, cleared his throat. 

"Angel, I'm fine," he said, and this time he almost sounded it. 

"Of course you are," Aziraphale said, still with that note of caution. "Come on, then." 

Crowley found himself tugged - by the no-mans-land of his jacket sleeve, and wasn't that a weight in the base of his stomach? - to sit on the sofa. Aziraphale knelt at his feet and carefully tugged off his shoes, pairing them neatly and incredibly out of place under the occasional table by the stairs. The sofa cushion sank next to him and he was tugged again, carefully, until he could tuck his feet up against the arm of the sofa and rest his cheek on the angel's awful, ugly and sinfully comfortable corduroys. 

"Angel?"

Aziraphale hushed him and tugged his sunglasses off the top of his head, folding them neatly and putting them - somewhere. Crowley couldn't quite follow the movement. 

Demons don't actually _need_ sleep, even though Crowley had cultivated it as a hobby, but there were things that require a little processing time, and when Crowley opened his eyes again, rolled onto his back, the angel's face was lit by lamplight. He'd secured a book from somewhere that was probably down the back or the side of the sofa - judging by the odd uncomfortable spot that was under the cushions, under Crowley's arse - and was peering at it through ridiculous half-moon glasses that it was impossible for him to have ever needed. The angle of his neck against the back of the sofa looked torturous but he hadn't once shifted, or twitched, or done anything that would cause him to move under Crowley. 

Crowley was uncomfortably certain that he could name the feeling in his chest, if he tried. That it would be a relatively simple matter to put words to the spun-glass fragility that he was worried might shatter him if he looked at it wrong. Instead he rolled onto his side again, reached up to hook his fingers over Aziraphale's waistband, knuckles pressing into the the angel's squashy stomach and wrist resting against - _oh._

"Making an effort, angel?" he asked, the slow sly tone of these words far easier than framing any others would have been. 

Aziraphale closed his book with a snap, placing it carefully on the arm of the sofa and folding his glasses on top. 

"I find it's difficult not to, with you," he said simply. 

It wasn't quite what Crowley meant - or at least, it was wrapped up within it. But there was something amazing about the way Aziraphale's hands didn't move as he tugged Aziraphale's shirt from his trousers and undid the lowest few buttons, running his fingers gently over the angel's lightly furred stomach. How his fingers just twitched and clawed a little into the give of the sofa cushions when Crowley turned his attention to his trousers, the creak of stiff fabric easing over the button and the gentle click of the teeth on his fly. 

"Yes?" Crowley asked. 

"Crowley - " Aziraphale said, and it wasn't entirely a means of getting his way, and it wasn't entirely a reaction to the tone of his voice that had Crowley shuffling forward to breathe hotly against flushed skin. Aziraphale whimpered. "Yes," he said, "yes, of course, always." 

He had to stretch his mouth wider than he'd expected, than he'd remembered from others before. He relished the almost-instant slight ache in his jaw. This was something so undeniably, awkwardly, embarrassingly human; he'd forgotten how much _spit_ was involved, but it slicked his palm when he wrapped his hand around the base, moved it in counterpoint to his head. This wasn't quite what he meant but it was everything he needed, reducing the angel to half-swallowed noises and fragments of words, his vocabulary stolen by the curl of Crowley's tongue. 

Crowley would have happily stayed there forever. It was painful to say it, even safely inside his head, and he was worried he'd have some sort of allergic reaction to the sappiness, but nothing had ever really felt more true. It was almost a disappointment when the angel tangled painful fingers in Crowley's hair and pushed up against him, when he whined in the back of his throat and Crowley's mouth filled with salty bitterness, leaked around the edges and over his knuckles. 

Almost. 

"I'm basking!" he protested when Aziraphale hauled him upright, when he slid off the sofa and dropped to his knees with a rug-muffled thud and started fumbling at the button of Crowley's trousers with still-shaking fingers. Crowley steadied them and then held them still so he could wrap the angel's hand in his. 

"It's okay," he said, a note in his voice he wasn't sure he'd ever heard before. "I'm fine, it doesn't have to be about that." He swallowed hard. "Angel, I - it's not just about that. You do know - ?" 

"Yes," said Aziraphale, a riotous flush still painting his cheeks, and slapped at Crowley's hands. "But _could_ it be, please?" 

Crowley's mouth dropped open and Aziraphale snorted out a breathless laugh then leaned forward a little on his knees so he could cup Crowley's cheek in his palm. 

"It's not that I don't appreciate the sentiment," he said, low and intimate. "It's not that I don't _return_ it, only Crowley, I've been _waiting_." He leaned in to brush his lips against Crowley's gently, chaste at first. He pulled away slightly and Crowley groaned and pulled him back in, the kiss long and tender and so very deep that he barely noticed Aziraphale's fingers working at the waistband of his trousers until the angel had grabbed the back of them and pulled them off in three sharp, impatient tugs. 

"Oh," breathed Crowley, a smile slowly spreading across his face, "oh this is going to be _fun_." 

"Trust me, my dear," said Aziraphale, gentle and demure and with the light pouring in from the kitchen to form a halo behind his head, "you haven't the _faintest_ idea."


End file.
